Northwestern University in Qatar will host the next edition of its signature Rawabet Conference Series, “Shaping the AI-Empowered Future of Knowledge, Scholarship, and Creativity”, on September 1–2, 2025. The conference will convene global thought-leaders from academia, industry, and the arts to explore the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on knowledge systems, education, creative industries, and society.
Building on the Series’ mission to bridge global debates with perspectives from the Global South, this edition will provide a platform for cutting-edge research, critical reflection, and dialogue on how AI is reshaping knowledge production, scholarship, creativity, and communication. A series of speaker presentations will highlight AI’s opportunities in advancing science, education, and media, while also addressing urgent challenges around ethics, bias, inequality, and digital justice.
“Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant future; it is a reality that is profoundly altering how we learn, create, and engage with one another,” said Marwan M. Kraidy, dean and CEO of Northwestern Qatar. “Here at Northwestern Qatar, we are deeply committed to exploring these changes with both rigor and imagination. Through this Rawabet conference, we hope to bring voices from the Global South into the conversation and create a space for dialogue that is as inclusive as it is forward-looking.”
“Here at Northwestern Qatar, we are deeply committed to exploring these changes with both rigor and imagination. Through this Rawabet conference, we hope to bring voices from the Global South into the conversation and create a space for dialogue that is as inclusive as it is forward-looking”
The two-day conference will commence with remarks by Dean Kraidy and will be followed by presentations and thematic sessions featuring leading scholars and practitioners. S. Venus Jin, Associate Dean for Education and Founding Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Media Lab (AIM Lab), will provide positioning remarks on building a humane AI ecosystem, by synthesizing the six focal themes of the conference: “The AI-Empowered Future,” “AI for a Better World,” “AI and Creativity,” “AI and Journalism,” “AI Ethics,” and “AI and the Global South.”
The first thematic session, “Shaping the AI-Empowered Future,” will focus on AI’s transformative role in scholarship and discovery. Noshir Contractor, Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University, will examine emerging collaborative networks that integrate human and machine intelligence. V.S. Subrahmanian, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Computer Science, will look at AI-driven breakthroughs in fields ranging from drug discovery to materials science, alongside the associated risks and safeguards.
Following this, the second thematic session, “AI For a Better World?: (AI and (Dis)Information),” will examine AI’s influence on information ecosystems. Marc Owen Jones, Associate Professor of media analytics and AIM Lab faculty affiliate at Northwestern Qatar, will explore how AI-generated content, including deepfakes and large-scale “slopaganda” campaigns, is reshaping public discourse.
Expanding the conversation to creativity and innovation, the sessions under the third theme, “AI and Creativity: Transformative Impact on Media Entrepreneurship,” will look at AI’s effects on cultural production and storytelling. Young Joon Cha, co-founder and CEO of ODK Media, will examine generative AI and AI-powered localization in the global entertainment industry. This theme will also feature presentations from Northwestern Qatar AIM Lab faculty and students, including Professor Spencer Striker on cinematic storytelling, Associate Professor Sam Meekings on pedagogical applications of generative AI in writing, and student researcher and AURORA grantee Shugyla Karshygakyzy on entrepreneurial applications of AI in social media content creation.
Building on these insights, presentations from Shahzad Ahmed, co-founder of Hoja AI, and Jesse Payne, Associate Professor of VCUarts Qatar, will highlight human-centered AI design and hybrid creative processes that merge traditional and generative methods.
The second day will begin with the fourth theme, “AI and Journalism.” Jeremy Gilbert, Medill’s Knight Professor in digital media strategy at Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, will talk about the transformative impact of liquid content and how AI-powered storytelling enables hyper-personalized content delivery, thus exploring AI’s impact on journalistic practices and audience engagement. Following this, Ilhem Allagui, Professor and Director of the Journalism and Strategic Communication Program, will examine AI-driven newsroom production and strategic messaging, while Claudia Kozman, Associate Professor and AIM Lab faculty affiliate, will examine AI-generated sports journalism and its effects on audience perception.
To further address the second theme, “AI For a Better World”, Wajdi Zaghouani, Associate Professor and AIM Lab faculty affiliate, will present frameworks for building ethical and reliable AI systems from inception. Meanwhile, Zaid Almahmoud, postdoctoral scholar at AIM Lab, will present on AI-driven forecasting and explainability for mental health trends and intervention planning.
The fifth session, under the theme of “AI Ethics: Responsible and Inclusive AI,” will focus on ethical challenges in AI design and deployment. K.V. (Kiran) Bhatia, digital anthropologist and Responsible AI lead at Utrecht University, will draw on feminist ethnography and the Data CARE framework to reimagine generative AI through intersectional, gender-sensitive design. David Leslie, director of ethics and responsible innovation research at the Alan Turing Institute, will look at AI, ethics, and accountability.
Expanding on these themes, faculty and student contributors will address algorithmic harms and bias in AI. Fatima Al Naemi ’27 and Tayama Rai ’27, undergraduate student researchers at Northwestern Qatar, will present their work on “Triple Jeopardy,” exploring how non-Western women face compounded algorithmic harms shaped by gender, race, and global power asymmetries. The session will be moderated by Rajiv K. Mishra, Assistant Professor of Communication Program and Liberal Arts Program.
Sabeeka Al-Kuwari ’27, another Northwestern Qatar student researcher, will examine AI-based fake news detection in Arabic digital spaces in a conversation with Mohammed Ibahrine, Professor in the Journalism and Strategic Communication Program. Her presentation will look at how systemic failures due to dialectal misrecognition, algorithmic bias, and opacity, and advocate for dialect-aware, culturally grounded approaches to digital governance.
The sixth session, under the theme of “AI and the Global South,” will address AI’s intersection with labor, justice, and equity in historically marginalized regions. Student researcher Ayushi Jha ’27 will present “Data Colonialism and Labor Extraction in the Global South,” analyzing the exploitation of user data and labor by global digital platforms. This will be followed by a presentation by Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, proposing culturally adaptive, human-centered approaches to AI transparency that confront digital inequities and epistemic marginalization.
“Focusing on AI in the conference, we want to not only explore its possibilities, but also address its ethical and social challenges. By bringing together scholars, creators, and practitioners from around the world, we hope these conversations will guide us in using AI thoughtfully, so that innovation goes hand in hand with positive influence and meaningful impact”
The Conference will also feature a series of special exhibits running alongside the sessions, highlighting the intersection of AI, creativity, and local contexts. These include “AI and (In)Justice: AI-Generated Art Display in Pakistan” by Shakeeb Asrar, Assistant Professor in the Journalism and Strategic Communication Program, which showcases AI-generated artworks reflecting social and political realities. An interactive poster presentation, “Localizing Microsoft Cloud,” led by Professor Ibahrine, Maureen Wu, Lama Turki Al Khater, and Maryam Rubaih Al Kubaisi, will engage participants with practical applications of AI in regional contexts.
“Focusing on AI in the conference, we want to not only explore its possibilities, but also address its ethical and social challenges,” said Jin. “AI is already reshaping the way we create, communicate, work, and learn, and it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of new tools. In organizing this conference, we aim to step back and ask deeper questions: How can AI be designed and used responsibly? How can it serve various communities, rather than reinforce existing inequalities? By bringing together scholars, creators, and practitioners from around the world, we hope these conversations will guide us in using AI thoughtfully, so that innovation goes hand in hand with positive influence and meaningful impact.”
For more information about the Rawabet Conference Series, click here.
